Yeah, the game definitely used to run much, much more smoothly. Hell, it was more smoothly than DAoC on my computer at release. Now it runs like shit. Whatever they're doing to the graphics, it's not very efficient.
That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
I have noticed that I'm the only one who isn't bitching about load or lag times, but I'm running with a pretty decent system (FX-55, 7800 GTX, 2 gig ram) and cable modem, so I'm usually the first to zone in the missions. One person had such a horrible load time that we were more than half way threw a mission before she got in, and one guy just said he isn't doing mayhem missions 'cause his machine takes forever to load it.